Does Dìdi (2nd from left) really belong to the cool gang he joined?
Photo: IMAGO/CAP/TFS
As teenagers, we are the worst versions of ourselves – and are having the best time of our lives. At least that’s what director Sean Wang says about his semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama “Dìdi”. There couldn’t be a more apt description of the rollercoaster of emotions that Taiwanese immigrant son Chris goes through in Wang’s feature film debut.
Everyone can remember how difficult it was at 13 to want to belong and still develop your own personality and find your way.
This is also the case with Chris Wang, who is affectionately called “Dìdi” by his family, which means “little brother” in Mandarin. Shooting star Izaac Wang embodies the teenager with nuance and heartbreaking vulnerability.
His friends in Fremont, California, where Chris was born, nicknamed him Wang Wang – just one of many racist barbs the Asian American has to deal with. Added to this is the typical insecurity of being a teenager, aptly embodied by all the young actors, most of whom were in front of the camera for the first time.
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The film takes place in the summer of 2008, when the AOL messenger service, the first YouTube videos and the Facebook predecessor Myspace had a massive influence on teenagers’ social behavior. Cinematographer Sam Davis brilliantly captures the importance that a seemingly harmless chat has for the young people. The right emoji seems to provide merciless information about your level of coolness, and it can plunge you into isolation if someone removes you from their “top friends” list on Myspace. This is reminiscent of the indie film “Eighth Grade” by Bo Burnham, which also shows how much pressure social media can put on young people.
Chris, who has just finished middle school, discovers a girl on Myspace who is already in high school. It’s both torturous and amusing to watch him meticulously scour her profile and shamelessly pretend to like the same music and movies as her just to please her. And how their first date ends up being a bit of a disaster – even though Chris watched a kissing tutorial on YouTube beforehand.
Chris is currently anything but on good terms with his family. He constantly engages in tough verbal battles with his older sister Vivian (Shirley Chen), who will soon be leaving to study. He noticeably misses his father, who works in Taiwan and doesn’t even appear in the entire film. His mother’s (Joan Chen) care annoys him. For a long time he is completely overwhelmed by the need to see her situation. She is unsuccessful as a painter and has to listen to constant criticism from her mother-in-law, Nai Nai (Chang Li Hua), who lives with them and is played by the director’s real grandmother – also because of the children’s exceptionally bad behavior.
The only downside to this film, which is only 91 minutes short: unfortunately, the mother and grandmother are not as multifaceted as the young people. Despite their acting abilities, they seem a bit clichéd.
Chris loves spending time with his best friends Fahad and Soup. At the beginning, the three of them, captured atmospherically with the handheld camera, flee from an exploding mailbox – in which they have placed a dead squirrel. But when Chris later, completely inappropriately, tells two girls about this action that Fahad is trying to hit on, the boys’ friendship is over for the time being.
Hobby filmmaker Chris joins a group of older skateboarders whose tricks he documents more poorly than well. This is reminiscent of the youth skater film “Mid 90s” by Jonah Hill, but unlike its protagonist, Chris never really belongs to the clique to which he desperately tries to fit in – and in the process also grossly offends his mother.
It is precisely these scenes in which Chris comes across as unsympathetic – the situations that arise from his enormous insecurity and which he gets lost in – that keep the viewer fascinated in the almost documentary-like film. This is one of those coming-of-age films that takes teenagers and their mental anguish seriously and doesn’t just resolve everything in a Hollywood-esque way. Nevertheless, you won’t be able to resist a smile or two. It’s no coincidence that the teenage comedy “Superbad” is watched on television.
This very personal and yet universally valid coming-of-age drama rightly received the audience award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and in the CineKindl section of the Munich Film Festival – from people who can still remember exactly how her teenage phase was shameful and embarrassing, but also wonderfully crazy and ultimately important to her.
»Dìdi«, USA 2024. Director and script: Sean Wang. Starring: Izaac Wang, Joan Chen, Shirley Chen, Chang Li Hua. 91 min. In cinemas from August 15th.
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